The Purdue Exponent on Gun Control

As, student newspapers. A recent edition of the Purdue Exponent featured an article which was essentially a “pro-gun control” piece. Instead of fisking the article in the open on the blog, I decided to write an email to the author of the piece. The original article is at this link, I’ll let you know if I get a response.

Update: The Exponent published this piece today, which is essentially a counter-point to the original Op-ed to which I linked. There is one part that’s sort of incorrect, which I’ve copied below.

Due to the law requiring a carry permit to have a handgun on your person for any amount of time, however, it is technically illegal to take one home from a gun retailer before first acquiring a carry permit.

The law states as follows:

Sec. 1. (a) Except as provided in subsection (b) and section 2 of this chapter, a person shall not carry a handgun in any vehicle or on or about the person’s body, except in the person’s dwelling, on the person’s property or fixed place of business, without a license issued under this chapter being in the person’s possession.

But includes under the exceptions this section:

(11) any person while carrying a handgun unloaded and in a secure wrapper from the place of purchase to his dwelling or fixed place of business, or to a place of repair or back to his dwelling or fixed place of business, or in moving from one dwelling or business to another. (emphasis mine)

So it is quite legal to buy a handgun at a gun store, and carry in the secure wrapper back to your house/apartment; however if you want to actually take it to the range, you should have a carry permit.

The only other troubling piece of the second op-ed are the quotes by the West Lafayette Chief of Police, who comes off as a rather anti-gun administrator, who is just looking to deny permits. I know I have some Boilermaker readers, and I was wondering if any of you had experience with trying to get a permit through the West Lafayette PD.

Like this:

2 thoughts on “The Purdue Exponent on Gun Control”

I work in West Lafayette, but haven’t lived there since I graduated from Purdue in `95, so I haven’t had to deal with them. I can imagine though that in “Berkley on the Wabash” they would make it as hard as possible. In Lafayette, they required that the application be typed and that I submit a letter to the chief of police saying why I wanted one, to make it as annoying as possible I guess, though they had no legal authority to do so and the actual clerks I dealt with were quite friendly. I hear the Tippecanoe county sheriff is supposed to be really cool about it. When I renewed through the sheriff in Carroll county after moving out here, they practically filled out the application for me.

I will say though that I think Dombkowski’s quotes can be taken in the vein of “inadequate public speaking ability” + “new to the job” + “poor journalism”. He’s only been chief for a few weeks. I was interviewed by the Exponent many years ago and it wasn’t pretty, what they did with my words. Journalism majors must have a required course on screwing-up what people say in an attempt to make it comprehensible for kindergarteners. It’s a very sloppy article, and that’s what I’ve come to expect from journalists. They only care about the very loosest of generalities.

I wrote a letter-to-the-editor to them this morning pointing out how they got that part wrong and quoting the law, including a link to the Indiana code website (http://www.state.in.us/legislative/ic/code/). The J&C almost always publishes my letters to the editor, so it’s a fair bet the Exponent will too.

A quick correction, the original piece in the Exponent was an editorial, NOT an article, so it is perfectly fine for the writer to express HIS opinion and beliefs. The second piece was an article.
That’s all.